


Out of the Cold

by birdzilla



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (or at least situational awkward boners), Gen, Hypothermia, Injury, Kink Meme, Sharing Body Heat, not actually a pairing fic though, situational hunk/shiro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-29 07:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8481565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdzilla/pseuds/birdzilla
Summary: When Hunk and Shiro crash-land on a wintery planet, it's up to Hunk to keep Shiro alive and warm.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in response to [a prompt](http://voltron-kink.dreamwidth.org/1161.html?thread=571785#cmt571785) on the Voltron kink meme. The original prompt was:
>
>> Shiro and one of the male Paladins are stuck someplace cold, and Shiro is in bad shape; banged up, losing consciousness and slowly freezing to death. What's a Paladin to do? Take the one blanket they have, strip down and get skin to skin under that blanket to share body heat, of course!
>> 
>> It can be gen or the Paladin can have feelings for Shiro (and maybe get an inappropriate boner once Shiro starts to warm up?). Any one of the guys is fine, but I'd love to see Hunk in this.
> 
> I've expanded the last section from what was posted on the kink meme, but the earlier sections all only have minor edits.

That had been one hell of a crash.

If they'd been in the lions, it wouldn't have been a problem; Hunk was confident that the Yellow Lion could have stood up to both the Galra fire they'd taken coming down and the slam-bang of the landing, and the Black Lion was almost as sturdy. But instead they'd been in a pod, and even with the enhancements Pidge and Coran had made to the shielding, it hadn't had the durability to handle either.

Even with Shiro piloting, Hunk hadn't been able to take the violent descent. He'd panicked and hit the eject button halfway down. Now that he was on his feet, trudging doggedly along the trail of twisted metal engine parts that had left big steaming holes in the snow, he could only hope that Shiro had done the same.

"Shiro's a pilot," he reminded himself as he shuffled along from snow-crater to snow-crater, each one shallower than the last as the snow started to fill it again. "He knew when to bail out, right? He probably had a better idea of when than I did. Unless it really wasn't that bad, and I didn't need to bail out...."

Hunk's voice trailed off. He had pulled down the vacuum mask on his armor to keep out the roaring wind and the stinging flakes of snow it bore, but it didn't help with the low visibility that came with this kind of weather. The pod hadn't come into view for him until he was right on top of it, a mass of warped and twisted metal and sparking wires already quickly being covered by the drifting snow. It was upside-down, nose buried deep, shredded belly exposed.

"Shiro?" Hunk called, looking around at the crash site. He tapped the side of his helmet and tried calling over the comms again, though it hadn't gotten him anything but cold silence the last three times he tried. "Shiro, I'm at the crash site. Can you hear me?"

"Hunk?" Shiro's voice was low and slurred. "I'm... I'm still in the pod."

Hunk sagged in relief. "Shiro! Are you stuck?"

There was a pause before Shiro answered, his voice still dragging as if he was answering from the edge of exhaustion. "Yeah. I'm pretty stuck. The pod flipped, and my harness is jammed."

Hunk winced. He could imagine Shiro hanging upside-down in the inverted pod, dangling from his harness, all the blood rushing to his head.... "All right. Hang in there-" he thought he heard Shiro snort "-and I'll get you out."

"Right," Shiro answered. His voice was almost crisp this time, the confident tone of command with most of the slurring forced out of it, though Hunk could still hear what had to be the strain of his awkward position. "I know you've got this."

Hunk wished he could be as confident as Shiro. He could feel anxiety churning in his stomach, shortening his breath, as he looked over their situation. Shiro was trapped, the wind was rising, the light was fading as this part of the planet moved towards night, and somewhere far overhead, Galra ships were doubtless trying to triangulate where they'd landed.

"One thing at a time," Hunk told himself.

He had to get Shiro out of the pod, or they were both done for. The tiny vessel might have provided protection from the weather when it was intact and fully powered up, but it had been gouged nearly to pieces by Galra fire and their descent through the atmosphere. All that was left was the solid frame welded around the cockpit, the last line of defense for pilot and passenger, and the crisped and curled metal skin clinging to that frame. Hunk studied the fallen pod for a moment, taking in damage and leverage and angles.

Coran had given him an up-close and personal look at the guts and innards of one of the pods once, after their trip to the Balmera, and he knew how its skeleton was put together. Leaning down, he peeled a sheet of metal, already half-melted, away from the frame. The cold had made it brittle, and it nearly crumbled in his hands. Yanking out the charred circuits behind it, Hunk got his hands on the solid metal bar that had been holding all the rest up.

He crouched down, paying attention to his posture--he had leverage on his side if he did this right, but if he did it wrong, it would be a great way to throw out his back. Then, with one massive heave, he hauled upward, yanking this side of the pod up and up and up until the whole thing tilted, caught for a moment in a wavering balance, and flopped over like an upturned kayak.

He could hear Shiro grunt over the comm. His breathing echoed in Hunk's ears for a moment, harsh and gasping, and then he got control of his voice and spoke. "There you go, Hunk," he said shakily, the words wavering as if he had to search for them. "See, you've got this."

Panting with the exertion, Hunk scrambled up onto the freshly exposed nose of the pod. With most of the engine gone or blown, there was nothing to power the energy screen that usually made up the windshield, and he could drop straight into the empty space where his seat had been and start scrabbling at Shiro's seatbelts. Shiro gave him a tight smile, and Hunk realized that his helmet was caved in on one side. A long crack ran through the visor.

"Shiro!" he yelped, his hands freezing on the catch of the harness. "Please tell me you didn't hit your head-"

"The helmet took most of it, I think," Shiro said. He frowned, but it was a hazy expression. His face was even whiter than usual, making his scar stand out like a red streak emblazoned across his nose, and now that Hunk had stopped moving for a second it was obvious that he was shivering violently. "I don't think I'm concussed."

"Your pupils are the same size," Hunk said, eyeing Shiro doubtfully. "But that's doesn't mean you aren't concussed. Does your head hurt? How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Two," Shiro said. "My head doesn't hurt. My _side_ hurts."

And he'd been distracted by the helmet, but as soon as Hunk looked down, he saw the slick of blood, a thin pink sheet frozen over Shiro's armor, all the way down his right side. "You didn't tell me you were bleeding," he said, assaulting the jammed catch on Shiro's safety harness with fresh urgency.

The harness popped open, and Hunk threw it off. It hung up on Shiro's right side, and now that it was out of the way and Hunk could push Shiro sideways, very carefully and just a little, he could see that the harness was hung on the same wickedly jagged fork of metal that had driven through Shiro's armor and into his side. He probed gently around it with his fingertips, and Shiro flinched and hissed out a sharp breath through his nose.

"That doesn't look good," Hunk said. His stomach was flipping over, and he tried to convince it to settle. "I don't want to pull it out. You'll bleed more, and I don't think it'll freeze that fast...."

"We're both going to freeze if we don't get out of here," Shiro said, his teeth gritted. It was impossible to ignore his shivering. It was a good sign, Hunk reminded himself; as long as he was shivering, he wasn't too badly hypothermic. "Help me get my arm free and I'll cut it where it hit me so we can leave it in."

That was probably the best way to deal with it for now. Hunk shrugged helplessly, then reached further in, past the frozen slick of blood, to grab Shiro's arm. It was trapped half-behind him where the pod's side had crumpled inward from impact. Despite the care Hunk tried to take, he jarred the wound helping Shiro work it out, and winced when Shiro groaned. Fresh red blood trickled out from around the metal fork and immediately started to freeze.

As soon as he had his arm free, Shiro slashed it downward, glowing purple, to sear through the bent metal and cut himself loose. The two long prongs were still sunk into his side, and he'd left a good four or five inches sticking out of his armor, but he no longer risked either pulling the metal out or sinking it in deeper when he lurched forward to perch on the edge of his seat.

"We can't stay here," Hunk said, fighting down another quaver of his stomach and looking away from Shiro's injury. He pushed himself behind the seat instead, searching for the bag of emergency supplies he'd stashed in the pod before they took off. "This is way too open to wait out the weather in. And as soon as the weather clears up, the Galra are going to land right on top of us."

"There's a cliffside not too far away," Shiro said. His voice was slurring again, as if he'd run out of energy to talk and was forcing the words out now. "With trees growing up against it. I was aiming there when we came down."

Which meant that Shiro had been in control after all. Emerging with the bag in hand, Hunk felt a hot flush of embarrassment as he remembered his panic. "Sorry for bailing on you."

"Huh?" Shiro looked confused for a moment, then shook his head, wobbling alarmingly in the seat as he did so. "No, you did the right thing. Otherwise we'd both have been stuck here when we crashed."

The wobble had turned into rocking, a small back-and-forth movement, and Shiro had his arms wrapped around himself, hugging his own elbows. Hunk tried to catch his eye, looking again for mismatched pupils. "Shiro, are you sure you're not concussed?"

"No," Shiro said. "I'm just cold."

He had a crack in his helmet and a hole in his armor, and he'd lost blood from that wound--of course he was cold. Hunk could feel the creeping cold too, and his armor and all its insulation were intact. He draped the bag over one shoulder, then took Shiro's arm.

"We'll find those trees and hide out there," Hunk said. "It'll be warmer out of the wind, and maybe we can get a fire started."

Shiro started to stand, then hissed, hunching over his wounded side, and fell back into the seat. He shook his head and muttered, "I don't think I can."

"Shiro?" Hunk said, and heard his voice scaling up again. He stopped, swallowed, and tried to bring it back down. "Come on, Shiro, let's get out of the pod. Get out, and we can make it."

He had to prod a bit to get Shiro up again, this time leaning most of his weight on Hunk. After a bit of grunting and shoving on Hunk's part, and a shivering, spastic sort of hop on Shiro's, he flopped over the side of the pod, landing in the snow beneath. By the time Hunk had made it over the side himself, Shiro was up on his knees, but it didn't look like he was getting any further.

Panic kept fluttering in Hunk's chest, and he could feel it burn in his throat as he swallowed it down. "You can lean on me," he said, helping Shiro up. "Which way are we going?"

Shiro started at the question, frowned, and, after a long, heart-palpating moment, volunteered, "West. West-northwest."

Hunk fumbled with his compass for a moment before he got it straight. "This way. Hang on," he said. He was trying to sound calm and assured, the way Shiro had earlier, but it came out as a plea.

With Shiro's left arm draped over his shoulder and most of his weight once again resting on Hunk, they started out through the snow.

***

At first, Hunk wasn't sure whether the dark blot looming up in the sky ahead of them was nightfall, or the cliff. It was nearly dark by now already, the gloom of twilight dimmed even further by the swirling snow, and he tripped over the first bush before he realized that the trees Shiro had mentioned were right ahead of them.

The first few were too sparse to provide shelter, but the grove thickened up against the cliff. And better yet, when they got there, Hunk staggering along more-or-less carrying Shiro by now, he found that the cliff had a long, low overhang here that kept the remaining snow off. The indentation under it couldn't be called a cave, but it was some kind of shelter. Bending low, Hunk let Shiro slide down to lean against it.

"Let me take a look at your side," Hunk said, unslinging the bag and opening it up to dig through for the tiny medical kit. Setting it on top of the bag, he turned back to Shiro, steeling himself to examine the injury.

Shiro looked at him without recognition, his eyes barely focusing. His lips were faintly blue. Hunk could feel his heartrate jump about three speeds when he realized that Shiro had stopped shivering.

" _Please_ tell me your armor's warming you up," Hunk said.

"It's warm," Shiro agreed, slow and drowsy, drawling the words into mush. He reached for his helmet and fumbled it off, his hands slipping on the metal a few times before he managed to knock it loose and send it clattering off to the side. He went for the top clasp of his armor next, but his hands were too uncoordinated to undo the hidden fastener. "Could probably get this off...."

"No! No, no, nope, definitely don't do that," Hunk said, grabbing Shiro's hands in a fit of alarm and pinning them against his chest. "I remember this from our survival courses. Warm is not good. Warm is a bad sign right now. This is bad. I've got to get you warmed up fast."

Shiro made a grumbling noise that could have been another slurred word or just a sound of agreement.

"But first I have to do something about your side." Hunk frowned and looked over his shoulder, into the darkness of the forest beyond. "And I need a source of heat, or we're both going to freeze."

That, at least, he had. The medical kit was all Earth basics, or simple tools from the castle that could be used the same way; Coran's fancy gadgets were designed for Alteans, and while Hunk had been working on recalibrating them, he hadn't finished with any of the portable ones yet. But there were other Altean supplies that he'd been happy to include in his go-bag, and one of them was their best chance of survival.

Pulling the round metal globe out of the bottom of the bag, Hunk triggered the three-legged tripod at the bottom first, setting it carefully on the ground close to the edge of the cliff. The energy screen it produced had a tiny radius, and if he could set it to use the ground and the cliffside as a floor and a wall, the portable shield-sphere would last a lot longer. Or have a lot more energy left over, which was what Hunk wanted.

He triggered the shield next, and a shimmer of translucent blue hexes rose in front of them, blocking the wind and snow. Hunk sighed in relief as the roaring rush of them finally stopped. Then he brought up a control screen over the globe with another button and fiddled with the settings, telling the globe to radiate the waste-heat from its core, and turning the frequency up on that until it was running nice and hot. It beeped at him, warning him that it would only last approximately .45 cycles with that level of energy output, and Hunk overrode the alert. If he didn't get Shiro warmed up now, it wouldn't matter if they still had the screen tomorrow.

Now that there was warmth filling the enclosed space around them, Hunk could feel his own numb fingers and toes prickling painfully as circulation returned. He flexed them, wincing at the pins-and-needles sensation, and then turned back to Shiro.

Shiro had shoved himself up against the wall, scrunched under the lowest point of the overhang, and was curled there unmoving. Hunk felt another lurch of panic at the sight, his breath catching in his chest, and scrambled towards him on his knees to slide two fingers against his neck. Realizing that he wouldn't be able to feel a pulse through his gauntlets, he colored, slid them off, and tried again. He could feel a faint pulse, but it was weak and thready. Shiro didn't react to the touch, and his skin wasn't nearly as warm against Hunk's cold fingers as it should have been.

"It's okay," Hunk said, as if saying it would somehow make it so, and pulled Shiro out far enough that he could start unfastening his armor. "I've got the globe going, and I'm just going to get your armor off, so I can take a look at this thing in your side."

He had to break Shiro's armor on that side, along the crack that the metal had made coming in. Muttering an apology, he set the mangled cuirass aside and peeled back the torn, bloodied undersuit beneath. Bandaging the wound was a quick affair--he didn't dare pull the metal prongs out, since he didn't know how far in they'd penetrated. He'd leave advanced care for Coran and the healing pods, once they got back to the castle. Because they were definitely going to get back to the castle, both of them, just fine, and if Hunk kept telling himself that maybe he'd stop feeling quite so much like he wanted to throw up.

He used the bandages in the medical kit to stabilize the metal prongs where they sat, instead, thick rolls around and between them and a wrap all the way around Shiro's torso to hold those in place. Shiro's pulse was still there when he checked again, but it was still weak and thready, and while Hunk's fingers and toes had warmed back to normal, Shiro's skin still felt chill to the touch.

"This isn't good," Hunk muttered to himself.

He sat back on his heels for a moment, casting his thoughts back to the survival courses they'd been through in the Garrison. The practicals had been more a test of endurance and memory than an educational experience; most of what he remembered of those at this point was how miserable they'd been, two or three days with his stomach grumbling in some swamp or badland or remote mountain valley. None of them had taken place anywhere this cold. But they'd talked about cold survival in the classroom portions--talked a _lot_ about it, because space was cold, space was _freezing_ , and the luckiest of them would someday go up into it.

Hunk groaned to himself as memory finally provided his answer. Even with the globe radiating away behind him, the last thing he wanted to do was strip. But he started taking his armor off anyway, setting it with Shiro's in an untidy pile near the energy screen. He only hesitated for a moment when he got to his undersuit; all he needed was another look at Shiro, blue-lipped and still, to get over that hang-up. Shiro's came the rest of the way off too, and then Hunk pulled the foil blanket out of his emergency bag and shook it out.

Tugging on Shiro's shoulders, Hunk maneuvered him until he was lying closer to the globe, for the benefit of the meager heat it was putting out, and lay down beside him. He pulled the foil blanket over them both and scrunched close, his chest against Shiro's back, his legs bracketing Shiro's, his arms folded around Shiro and the fingers of his right hand interlaced with the fingers of Shiro's left. It was uncomfortably intimate, and Hunk could feel himself coloring at all the skin-to-skin contact, but Shiro was too cold against his flushed chest for the embarrassment to last.

"Lance always says I'm practically a space heater," he muttered against the back of Shiro's neck. "Let's see if he's right."

This close, Hunk could hear Shiro's breathing, slow and shallow but reassuring in its presence nonetheless. Curling even more tightly around him, Hunk covered Shiro's chest with his free hand. He could feel himself getting toasty warm already as the foil blanket reflected his body heat inwards. Swallowing down nervous bile, Hunk hoped that it would be enough for Shiro.

***

Shiro warmed up slowly.

At first Hunk wasn't sure if he was warming up at all. He laid there in silence, sick with anxiety, terrified that he'd done too little, too late, and the soft sounds of Shiro's breathing would eventually stop.

After a while it seemed to him that Shiro's skin was a little less chill than before. It could have been his imagination, and Hunk couldn't trust the possibility just yet, but he clung tight to the hope anyway. It felt like hours before he could be certain: yes, Shiro was a little warmer. There was a little bit of pink coming back into his too-pale skin. His lips were still white, but they were no longer blue.

Impatience started to eat at him, but Hunk forced it down. Warming up slowly was good; he remembered that from his survival courses too. If the process had been too fast, it would have done even more damage than the cold would have in the first place. He just had to keep lying here, wrapped around Shiro, and let him recover at a safe, slow pace. Hunk started breathing exercises, in through his nose and out through his mouth, and somewhere in between Shiro's pinking skin and the slow in-and-out, he relaxed enough to finally drift off to sleep.

***

The first thing that registered for Hunk when he woke up was that Shiro was warm in his arms. Maybe not quite as warm as usual, definitely not as warm as Hunk, but still warm, a good warm, a living, fleshy warm that made Hunk breathe out a gusty sigh of relief against the back of Shiro's neck.

The next thing that registered for Hunk was his erection. At some point while he was asleep, his body had figured out that he was pressed up, intimately close, against a familiar and muscular form, and had decided to take advantage of the situation. Hunk could feel himself squashed hard against the small of Shiro's back, the slight lumbar curve leaving just enough space to spare him some embarrassing friction. Face hot with with embarrassment, Hunk unlaced his fingers from Shiro's and untwined their legs and started to retreat slowly backward, wriggling his other arm free from under Shiro's side.

"Hunk?" Shiro's voice was sleepy and hoarse.

Yelping, Hunk scrambled backward until he was out from under the blanket entirely. Shiro was starting to roll towards him, and Hunk felt himself go even brighter red as he realized that he'd just exposed himself. He nearly flung himself down on the pile of armor, yanking Shiro's undersuit over his lap just in time.

"Sh-Shiro," he said, his face so hot it prickled. "Hey, I uh- I just- how are you feeling?"

"Like I got stabbed by something," Shiro said, blinking blearily and probing at his side under the blanket. Hunk could see when realization dawned. Shiro tried to push himself up into a sitting position, wavered in the movement, and ended up propped on his left elbow instead, catching the blanket just before it could slide away. "I must have been pretty out of it."

"Y-yeah," Hunk agreed, some of the heat leaving his face now that they were on safe--well, kind of safe--conversational ground. He hoped Shiro wouldn't decide to bring up the awkward wake-up call. "You scared me for a while there."

Shiro frowned, and Hunk regretted the statement. Then he looked up at Hunk and smiled. "You did a good job, given the situation."

Hunk shrugged awkwardly. "You flew us in, and you knew where to go. All I did was walk us here and turn on the globe."

"Don't sell yourself short." Shiro shook his head. "You did great, Hunk."

Hunk smiled sheepishly back at Shiro. Then, since he was sitting on all the armor anyway, he reached down into the pile and dug out his helmet. "I wonder if it's safe to contact the others yet. We should get them to pick us up soon, but if the Galra are still in the area, they might be listening in to our communications."

"Wait for them to call us," Shiro said. "They know we crashed, and they'll want to get in touch. We know they'll try it as soon as it's safe, and they can tell whether it is better than when can."

Hunk nodded, setting his helmet down again. "I hope it's soon."

"I'm sure it will be. Now that we've been shot down, there's no more point in trying to sneak around, so they'll go ahead and bring out the lions. There weren't that many Galra ships." Shiro smiled at Hunk. Despite the dark circles under his eyes, stark against his still-pale skin, he looked confident, assured of their imminent rescue.

Hunk felt bolstered by his confidence, but he still couldn't help looking over at the shield-sphere. It was mostly opaque, blocking out visuals as well as sound, but there was some light filtering in through the translucent blue hexes, suggesting that morning had arrived. He was close enough to reach out and bring up the globe's display again.

"We only have a couple hours until this thing runs out of power," he told Shiro. "We should get ready for that. I had to, uh, break your armor to get you fixed up-" he winced as he made the confession, his face going hot "-but it should be okay except for the cuirass, and I've got some of those Altaen glue-strips in my bag. They're almost as good as duct tape. Your undersuit's a mess, though. We might be able to cut the bottom off, so you can have pants?"

He fingered the black fabric spread across his lap. There wasn't anything left to hide there, now that the conversation had cooled him down, but the memory was still embarrassing. Either Shiro hadn't noticed at all or he wasn't going to bring it up, but either way, Hunk was relieved. Shiro was a nice guy, and objectively he was pretty hot, but--wow, no. Shiro was too much like their commanding officer to even go there.

Shiro grimaced, but then shrugged and gave Hunk a wry smile. "I think you've got a plan. You've done a great job with everything, Hunk," he said again, forceful and earnest, like he wanted to make extra sure Hunk believed it. Hunk looked up, and Shiro met his eyes. "Bailing out when you did and packing that emergency bag saved both our lives."

Hunk shakily smiled back, feeling himself go red again. But the heat was as much from pleasure as embarrassment this time. "Yeah. Uh, thanks," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Let me get your armor fixed up."

"All right." Shiro reached out and snagged his cracked helmet, pulling it closer. "We should get geared up before everyone else gets here."

Bending over Shiro's armor, glue-strips in hand, Hunk caught himself glancing up every so often at Shiro, just checking that he was still pink and moving and alive. A warm rush of relief flooded his chest every time. Even with the blue glow of the control panel to his side, showing the shield-sphere's power levels dropping away, he couldn't be too worried as long as Shiro was awake and alert to back him up. Hunk had gotten him through the night, and they'd get through the rest of the day together.


End file.
